WASHINGTON − The Supreme Court appeared sympathetic on Jan. 13 to state bans on transgender girls competing on female sports teams, one of the nation’s most high-profile and divisive cultural and political issues.
Chief Justice John Roberts, whose vote is likely to be key to the outcome, expressed skepticism about the challenges brought by transgender students to bans in Idaho and West Virginia during Tuesday’s oral arguments.
While the court’s three liberal justices focused on the fact that some transgender students may not have an athletic advantage after undergoing hormone treatments, Roberts said allowing challenges to state law from a fairly small group of people could have broader implications.
“If we adopted that, that would have to apply across board and not simply to the area of athletics,” Roberts said near the end of debate on the first case, a challenge to Idaho’s ban.
There are only three justices on the high court appointed by Democrats, compared to six Republican-appointed justices. That means the three liberal justices need to pull over two conservatives, assuming the court largely breaks down along ideological lines.
Ahead of today’s arguments, Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch, two Republican-appointed members of the court, were seen as potentially crucial votes for the transgender athletes to win over.
The transgender students from Idaho and West Virginia who are challenging their states’ bans say the laws don’t take into account individual circumstances, including whether someone who takes puberty-blockers or cross-gender hormones may no longer be bigger, faster or stronger than a typical female.
The states argue that athletic advantages remain even after hormonal treatments and the bans are necessary to ensure fairness and safety in female sports.
Follow along for live coverage of the debate.
Debate concludes in historic case
The historic debate ended after more than three hours of passionate argument.
The last word went to Michael Williams, West Virginia’s solicitor general, who defended his state’s law.
After arguing that the law doesn’t have to be a “perfect fit” in every situation, Williams said states should be able to legislate in areas of “evolving science and medicine,” especially when they involve children.
He said that’s the approach the court took last year when allowing Tennessee to ban puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors.
And when there are competing interests – the rights of transgender students versus the rights of other athletes – states get to make a policy judgment, Williams said.
Because West Virginia’s law recognizes “enduring and inherent differences between men and women,” he concluded, it should be upheld.
A decision is expected by the end of June or early July.
– Maureen Groppe
Barrett asks if boys who identify as boys can play on girls’ teams
Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked the lawyer for a transgender athlete whether he would support a boy who identifies as a boy to play on a team for girls.
Joshua Block, who represents Becky Pepper-Jackson, a 10th-grader in West Virginia, said he did not. Title IX’s separation of men’s and women’s sports wasn’t intended to create good teams and bad teams.
“We don’t think the boys’ team is for better athletes and you have a backup team for other athletes that aren’t as good,” Block said. “The purpose is to control for the variable of sex to provide equality, not to have a good team and a team for people that can’t cut it.”
– Bart Jansen
Roberts pushes ACLU lawyer to justify ‘an exception’ for transgender girls
Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative whose vote could be key, pushed ACLU lawyer Joshua Block to justify ‘requiring an exception’ to the basic classification of girls and boys on sports teams.
‘You’re not challenging the idea of having boys and girls in separate sports. You’re saying that you cannot exclude transgender girls from the definition of girls,’ Roberts said.
Block responded that he’s saying the separation of girls and boys in sports is generally valid, but isn’t valid when it’s applied to his client.
‘I don’t think we’re arguing for an exception,’ he said. ‘It’s a claim saying, ‘It’s, as applied to them, it’s okay. As applied to me, it’s not.’
– Aysha Bagchi
Attorney for West Virginia student argues for a narrow ruling
Joshua Block, the attorney representing the West Virginia student challenging that state’s ban, said the Supreme Court should send the case back to the trial court to examine the evidence about whether the student has an athletic advantage.
“I really do want to make a pitch for resolving it based on the facts,” he said. “Because, look, if they’re right about the facts, then we should lose.”
There’s no need, Block argued, for the court to issue a broad ruling affecting everyone in the country when the evidence could resolve whether West Virginia’s ban should apply to Pepper-Jackson.
“The court wants to get it right and I don’t think the best way to get it right is to rely on cherry-picked studies or assertions,” he said.
The case was appealed to the Supreme Court before the trial court had finished examining the evidence about how student Becky Pepper-Jackson’s medical treatments have affected any natural athletic advantages.
– Maureen Groppe
West Virginia ban stigmatizes transgender student, attorney says
Joshua Block, the attorney representing the West Virginia student challenging that state’s ban, opened his arguments by telling the court that Becky Pepper-Jackson wants to play sports because she wants to make new friends and be part of a team.
Excluding her from female teams doesn’t advance fairness and safety, he said, if the evidence shows she has no relevant physiological differences. (Pepper-Jackson received puberty-delaying medication and estrogen so her physical characteristics are typical of non-transgender girls, according to her lawyers.)
Block urged the court to rely on its 2020 ruling that transgender people cannot be discriminated against at work.
Keeping Pepper-Jackson from female track and field teams, he said, “excludes her from all athletic opportunity while stigmatizing and separating her from her peers.”
– Maureen Groppe
DOJ lawyer says recognizing transgender athletes would undermine Title IX
Hashim Mooppan, principal deputy solicitor general, told Justice Sonia Sotomayor that Congress approved Title IX and its regulations to protect female participation in sports because of biological differences between the sexes.
“If you purport to separate based on biological sex but then you allow some biological males to play on the female team, you’ve undermined the justification for separating in the first place,” Mooppan said.
In contrast, he said schools couldn’t prevent members of one sex from attending a class on world history.
– Bart Jansen
Trump administration lawyer says biological sex is what matters
Justice Department lawyer Hashim Mooppan, who earlier defended Idaho’s ban, is now addressing the West Virginia ban. He said in his opening statement that the justices can avoid addressing questions about whether taking drugs to suppress testosterone eliminatesphysical advantage for transgender women by focusing on biological sex.
Mooppan said government regulations define separation in sports ‘based on sex, based on biology, not based on circulating testosterone levels.’
The other side’s ‘claim that they’ve eliminated the difference just doesn’t matter under the language of the regs, and that’s enough to resolve the case,’ he said.
– Aysha Bagchi
Roberts signals he views transgender sports case as different from earlier challenge
Chief Justice John Roberts signaled that he may view this case differently than one from 2020, in which he joined the court’s liberals in ruling that transgender people cannot be discriminated against at work.
That 2020 case, he said, was about whether firing someone because they’re transgender is discriminating on the basis of sex.
West Virginia Solicitor General Michael Williams took Roberts’ opportunity to say that the Supreme Court can uphold his state’s law – while staying true to 2020 ruling – by saying that laws turning on someone’s biological sex aren’t the same as defining students based on transgender status.
– Maureen Groppe
Transgender uproar comes amid a paucity of transgender athletes
The International Olympic Committee had protocols allowing the participation of transgender athletes ahead of the Summer Games in Athens in 2004, and the NCAA implemented its own rules in 2011. During that time, there were few openly transgender athletes.
There’s been one openly transgender athlete to compete at an Olympics, a weightlifter from New Zealand who went out after the first round of competition in Tokyo in 2021. NCAA president Charlie Baker said in 2024 there were “less than 10” transgender athletes out of the more than 500,000 college athletes.
Sports organizations began moving to exclusion amid public pressure. Several international sports federations now have policies that either outright ban transgender athletes or prohibit anyone who went through male puberty from competing.
The IOC has changed its policy to defer to the individual sports federations and has indicated it is considering a full ban. The NCAA banned transgender women from competition after an executive order from the White House, though it still allows them to practice.
−USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour
Barrett: Can state bans lead to discrimination against all women?
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked Michael Williams, a lawyer defending West Virginia’s ban, if his legal defense of the ban goes too far.
She said lawyers on the other side of the debate ‘have basically conceded’ that sex-separated sports teams are permissible, even if they don’t believe transgender women may be categorically excluded from female teams. So, she said, he doesn’t need to defend sex-separated sports. She was more curious about whether some of his arguments could be used to justify other forms of sex segregation.
‘If a state produced some studies saying, ‘Listen, you know, women’s presence in, you know calculus is holding men back,’ … seems to me like there’d be some risk on your understanding that that would be okay,’ Barrett said.
Williams responded that such a policy would be much closer to the type of sex-based exclusion that Title IX was meant to prohibit. Title IX prohibits excluding people from federally-funded educational activities based on sex.
‘That really kind of puts the lie to the position that West Virginia is somehow discriminating, because it’s advancing the very same purpose that Congress itself was trying to advance in enacting Title IX in the first place,’ he said.
– Aysha Bagchi
Transgender debate becomes chess match
Justice Elena Kagan asked whether transgender students would have a legal case if excluded from chess club.
“I think there are a lot of chess grandmasters who would tell you that women, for whatever reason, they’re not as good at this,” Kagan said.
West Virginia Solicitor General Michael Williams said a legal challenge over membership in the chess club “might fail because there’s a lack of evidence of meaningful physiological differences” cited in the athletic regulations.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh noted that the West Virginia law and regulations against transgender athletes focus on sports under federal Title IX. He said a ruling on sports “does not open the door” to challenges about the chess club.
– Bart Jansen
W.Va. lawyer argues transgender athletes would upend Title IX
West Virginia Solicitor General Michael Williams said states have long assigned players to teams according to sex, and maintaining separate teams ensures that girls can fairly and safely compete.
He argued that Title IX, which Congress approved to protect access for females to sports, allows for separating teams by sex. But transgender athletes want to place students on teams based on their self-identified gender, which he said would turn Title IX into a law that denies females fair opportunities to compete in sports, he said.
“The court should not embrace that backwards logic,” Williams said.
– Bart Jansen
Top Republicans voice support for bans on transgender athletes
Leading Republicans including House Speaker Mike Johnson, Rep. Lisa McClain of Michigan, Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, and Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama spoke out in support of the state bans on the steps of the Supreme Court.
Tuberville and former West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice spoke of their experiences coaching sports and said it would be unfair for their athletes to compete against transgender girls.
“Those girls on my team work really hard,” said Justice. “They don’t deserve to be disadvantaged.”
Education Secretary Linda McMahon outlined the steps the Trump administration has taken to expedite Title IX investigations and secure settlements from schools like the University of Pennsylvania, which stripped a record held by transgender swimmer Lia Thomas. McMahon said the administration is committed to an “understanding of sex based on scientific reality.”
“The cases that are being argued today, they’re not abstract legal debates they reflect a real, troubling pattern of harm inflicted by radical forces that are looking to reshape our culture,” she said. “We cannot let it happen.”
– N’dea Yancey-Bragg
Debate turns to West Virginia’s law
After the justices spent about two hours debating Idaho’s ban, they’re now considering West Virginia’s law.
This case has a separate legal issue. In addition to the constitutional question of equal protection that was raised in the Idaho challenge, the West Virginia case is also about whether the ban violates the section of a landmark civil rights bill barring sex discrimination in educational programs.
West Virginia is appealing the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling that the law runs afoul of Title IX, in part because it excludes transgender students from girls’ teams regardless of whether they have a competitive advantage.
Becky Pepper-Jackson, the West Virginia high schooler challenging the law, says her physical characteristics are typic of other female athletes because she receives puberty-delaying medication and estrogen.
– Maureen Groppe
Barrett questions whether tests of transgender athletes are invasive
Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked the lawyer for a transgender athlete if the state could require a testosterone test for someone to participate in sports.
“Why wouldn’t that be invasive?” Barrett asked.
Kathleen Hartnett, the lawyer representing transgender athlete Lindsay Hecox, said transgender athletes get routine blood tests so requiring test results would be a minimal burden.
Hartnett said Idaho’s law required athletes to get three tests to prove their gender: a physical exam of their anatomy, a chromosomal test and a blood test that would require the athlete to stop hormone treatment.
– Bart Jansen
‘Are they bigots?’ Alito asks of women who oppose transgender participation
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito raised the complaints from some female athletes who oppose transgender women being able to compete in women’s sports. He appeared to be pushing back against efforts to label them as narrow-minded, irrational, or hateful.
‘Are they bigots? Are they deluded in thinking that they are subjected to unfair competition?’ Alito asked Kathleen Hartnett, the lawyer representing the Idaho transgender student who has challenged Idaho’s ban.
‘No, your honor, I would never call anyone that,’ Hartnett responded.
Hartnett added that the relevant issue is whether the Idaho law meets constitutional standards. ‘That is not an accusation of animus,’ she said.
– Aysha Bagchi
Lawyer for transgender athlete declines to define ‘sex’
Justice Samuel Alito, asked Kathleen Hartnett, the lawyer representing the Idaho transgender student, to define the term, ‘sex.’ He asked specifically for the definition when it comes to applying a constitutional provision that guarantees equal legal protection for people.
Alito posed a similar question earlier to a lawyer from the Justice Department. That lawyer said, under Title IX – a law that restricts states from excluding people from sports based on sex – ‘sex’ is defined biologically.
‘We do not have a definition for the court,’ Hartnett said.
Hartnett argued that the Idaho law, in practice, categorically excludes ‘birth sex males’ from women’s teams, and that doesn’t always make sense. She said it was enough for the court to know the Idaho law categorizes the transgender athlete in this case as a birth sex male and excludes her on that basis.
‘We’re taking the statute’s definitions as we find them, and we don’t dispute them,’ Hartnett said.
– Aysha Bagchi
Kavanaugh, a coach, focuses on fairness
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who coached his daughter’s basketball team, drew attention to the female athletes who don’t make a team or lose out on a medal to a transgender athlete.
“And I think we can’t sweep that aside,” he said. “I think that’s what’s undergirding some of the concerns, big picture.”
Kavanaugh also pointed to the success of Title IX in increasing sports opportunities for girls.
Kathleen Hartnett, the attorney representing the student challenging Idaho’s law, agreed that Title IX has been a “huge triumph.”
“It’s made a huge difference in our society,” she said. “That’s not what we’re talking about here.”
Instead, Hartnett called the case an “important moment” to step back and ask whether the law is responding to a problem “in a rational manner” or whether it overreaches on the presumption that transgender women are always going to have an athletic advantage.
– Maureen Groppe
Chief Justice Roberts: Transgender case could go far beyond sports
Chief Justice John Roberts asked whether the court should view the Idaho case as a challenge to the distinction between boys and girls or if the transgender athlete just wants an exception to the biological definition of girls.
Kathleen Hartnett, the lawyer representing transgender athlete Lindsay Hecox, said she wasn’t asking for a definition or an exception. She said states could regulate athletes by requiring testosterone tests, for example.
But Roberts said allowing legal challenges from a fairly small group, perhaps 1% of the population or 12 individuals, could lead to distinctions between boys and girls across a much broader field than just athletics.
“If we adopted that, that would have to apply across board and not simply to the area of athletics,” Roberts said.
Hartnett said the framework is for people to have equal protection of the law. “I think we’re not trying to invent something here,” Hartnett said.
– Bart Jansen
`Not our finest hour’
Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of the key conservative votes, returned to a previous issue he’d raised about whether transgender people have been historically discriminated against.
Kathleen Hartnett, the attorney representing the Idaho transgender student challenging the state’s ban, said transgender people were not allowed to immigrate to the United States under the argument that they were psychopaths. The Supreme Court said in a 1967 decision that when Congress used the term “psychopathic personality,” lawmakers meant to include homosexuals and others considered “sex perverts.”
“Not our finest hour,” Gorsuch interjected.
“Well, it’s not your fault,” Hartnett told the justice , who was not yet born at the time of the decision, drawing rare laughter during the serious debate.
– Maureen Groppe
Idaho student’s attorney emphasizes her hormone treatments
Kathleen Hartnett, the attorney representing the Idaho student challenging the ban, emphasized in her opening statement that Lindsay Hecox has suppressed her testosterone and takes estrogen.
Hecox, Hartnett said, has no “sex-based biological advantage.”
Because the law turns on whether someone is a biological male or female, she argued, it’s subject to extra scrutiny to make sure the line-drawing between genders is based on evidence.
When the state’s justification for that line-drawing doesn’t apply to some of the people affected, then it’s unconstitutional for those people, Hartnett said.
– Maureen Groppe
Alito asks what ‘sex’ means
Justice Samuel Alito, a George W. Bush appointee, asked Justice Department lawyer Hashim Mooppan what the term ‘sex’ means under Title IX, one of the legal provisions at the heart of this case.
Title IX says no one may be excluded from participating in an educational program or activity that receives federal funding on the basis of sex. The transgender challenger to Idaho’s ban argued that her exclusion from women’s sports violated Title IX.
Mooppan responded that ‘sex’ should be defined traditionally, by biological sex. He referenced the time at which Title IX was enacted, and said reproductive biology is probably the ‘best way of understanding that.’
The two sides in this case have wrangled over whether discrimination on the basis of sex under Title IX includes discrimination based on transgender status.
– Aysha Bagchi
Sotomayor: `The numbers don’t talk about the human being’
Justice Sonia Sotomayor continued the liberal justices’ main push that transgender athletes should have a chance to argue that the bans aren’t appropriate to their particular circumstance.
Sotomayor asked the Justice Department attorney, Hashim Mooppan, about his argument that the laws are okay because they’re fair when applied to 99% of biological males.
“The numbers don’t talk about the human being,” she said.
If 1% isn’t a large enough share to matter, what share is? Sotomayor asked.
Mooppan said the challengers would have to show the laws are unfair against a “substantial enough percentage” of people.
– Maureen Groppe
DOJ pushes a 99% solution for the question of transgender atheletes
Hashim Mooppan, principal deputy solicitor general at the Justice Department, said challenging a law regulating activity based on sex requires a significant portion of people to overturn.
Mooppan said if one-third of the people covered by a law thought it was tailored badly, courts should review it under an easier standard. But he argued that having a single person challenge a law required a higher level of scrutiny about whether the law is constitutional.
“Why does it have to be that many people? Why? Why?” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked.
She said if a law is unconstitutional for one person, it shouldn’t matter whether the person is outnumbered by the rest of the people covered by the law.
But Mooppan said if the law is reasonably tailored for 99% of the population, courts should review challenges with a higher standard.
“When the numbers get as small as they are here, that claim is not viable,” Mooppan said.
– Bart Jansen
Demonstrators show support for transgender rights
As athletes supporting transgender sports bans rallied on one side of the Supreme Court steps, speakers at a rally organized by the ACLU spoke out in support, as cheerleaders holding pink and blue pompoms performed.
Parents Ali and Shyam Munshi said they felt compelled to support for their transgender daughter.
Shyam Munshi joked that while his daughter ran track in high school she probably wouldn’t consider herself an athlete. But in order for her team not to be penalized, she had to compete on the boy’s team.
“It was hard because, just like every parent, we want our kids to be safe, we want them to be happy, and so it felt risky,” said Ali Munshi. She said her daughter’s teammates were supportive, but that the proliferation of sports bans has been “disheartening.”
‘It’s really hard to quantify the value of being on a team, competing with your friends, making those decisions, to come together through adversity and support each other or celebrate together in these moments of euphoria,” said Shyam Munshi. “These are integral pieces of being a kid, and to exclude someone from that opportunity is just wrong.”
– N’dea Yancey-Bragg
Justice Department backs Idaho’s law
After Idaho’s solicitor general sat down, an attorney for the U.S. Justice Department got a turn. Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department is supporting the state bans and asked the court for time to make their case.
Hashim Mooppan, a Justice Department attorney, said Idaho’s law is “reasonably tailored,” regardless of whether it is “perfectly tailored,” as it applies to any “tiny subset of men” who may not have athletic advantages after medical treatments.
States are not required to monitor testosterone levels of athletes, he said.
He drew a comparison with laws against sexual activity with someone underage that apply differently to men than women because women faced a unique risk of pregnancy.
Taking the other side’s logic, he said, a male rapist could claim the law didn’t apply if either the rapist or the female victim were infertile. That would be ludicrous, he said.
– Maureen Groppe
Conservative Justice Barrett asks about young transgender children
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, posed a hypothetical to Idaho’s solicitor general, Alan Hurst, that seemed aimed at considering if there are situations in which science does and doesn’t support banning transgender girls and women from women’s sports.
Barrett asked how Hurst’s argument would do if it was applied to a hypothetical ban on transgender six-year-old girls competing on a girl’s team. She said Hurst’s argument is based on testosterone levels and differences in athletic capability, which made her wonder how it would apply in an age group that’s prepubescent.
Hurst responded that the court record in the Idaho case supports the idea that even at such a young age, males have about a 5% athletic advantage over girls in most situations.
‘Now, if this is not a level of competition where anybody cares about that, the simple solution is the solution you see in most places, which is you have co-ed sports,’ Hurst said. ‘Idaho’s law does nothing to interfere with that.’
– Aysha Bagchi
Idaho argues states shouldn’t be forced to tailor laws for individuals
Idaho Solicitor General Alan Hurst told Justice Elena Kagan it would be unworkable for courts to order exceptions to laws based on a class of litigants any time judges thought they didn’t make sense.
Hurst argued litigants could keep moving the goal lines. For example, he said, if a law was based on taking testosterone, a transgender athlete could argue they are taking so little it provides no advantage.
“It’s going to be enormously burdensome and the state can never win,” Hurst said. “You’d have to make as many exceptions as courts thought you needed to make.”
– Bart Jansen
Kavanaugh probes if the constitution requires the state bans
The challenges before the court are about whether states can, under the law, ban transgender girls and women from participating in female athletics.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of the court’s conservatives, raised the question of whether the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection requires states to draw that line.
Alan Hurst, Idaho’s solicitor general, said he’s not persuaded by a constitutional theory that would let Idaho impose its policy on other states.
Twenty-seven states bar transgender girls and women from joining female sports teams. Other states either prohibit such bans or have not taken a position.
– Maureen Groppe
Sotomayor asks why the court should rule on Idaho ban at all
Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggested the court consider dismissing the Idaho case as ‘moot’ – a legal term that means there is no longer a live issue to rule on.
The plaintiff in the Idaho case, Lindsay Hecox, originally sued because Idaho’s ban blocked her from trying out for the Boise State Universitytrack and cross-country teams. But she has stopped playing women’s sports, and now says that means she no longer has a personal stake in the case. As a result, she argues, her case is moot.
Sotomayor said it’s clear Hecox wasn’t trying to prevent the court from ruling on the legality of state bans on transgender women competing in women’s sports, because the justices are also reviewing a similar ban in West Virginia.
‘So we don’t have a subterfuge in attempting to stop the court from reaching an important legal question,’ Sotomayor said.
Alan Hurst, Idaho’s solicitor general, responded that a lower court in the case had concluded Hecox’s plans had changed before and could change again, so she shouldn’t be able to get the case dropped that way.
– Aysha Bagchi
Do transgender people merit extra protection?
Justice Neil Gorsuch, one of the pivotal votes in the case, directed his first question to whether there’s been a history of discrimination against transgender people. That’s relevant to whether transgender status – similar to sex and race – triggers a higher level of scrutiny for laws affecting them.
Idaho’s solicitor general, Alan Hurst, said there’s no history of laws targeted transgender people the way there is for laws targeted African Americans or women.
“These things don’t compare,” he said.
Hurst also brought up comments Justice Amy Coney Barrett made in last year’s ruling upholding Tennessee’s ban on gender affirming care for transgender minors. Barrett argued that transgender status does not appear to merit heightened protection.
– Maureen Groppe
Idaho lawyer says case is about whether law is applied equally
Justice Elena Kagan asked how the court should review the case. She said one approach would resolve the dispute about whether a transgender athlete held an advantage. Another approach would resolve whether everyone is treated the same under the law.
“I don’t really know what you’re suggesting,” Kagan said. “Which way should we think about this case?
Idaho Solicitor General Alan Hurst said the court should resolve whether the classification of athletes is justified generally, not necessarily in each particular case.
“We think that’s the right approach: is the classification justified, not is it justified in each individual instance,” Hurst said.
– Bart Jansen
Idaho says student shouldn’t get to drop her challenge
Lindsay Hecox, the senior at Boise State University who is challenging Idaho’s law, in September asked the court to let her dismiss her case, writing that she was no longer playing sports and is afraid she will be harassed and have trouble graduating if the high-profile case continues. The court said it would wait until after oral arguments to decide.
Idaho’s solicitor general, Alan Hurst, argued on Jan. 13 that it was too late for Hecox to drop out.
Hecoz initially said she intended to play throughout college, he told the court.
– Maureen Groppe
Liberal Justice Sotomayor suggests tougher test for trans athlete ban
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, an Obama appointee, came out scrutinizing an argument from Alan Hurst, Idaho’s solicitor general, who is defending the state’s ban on transgender women participating in women’s sports. Hurst said the justices should apply a low level of scrutiny – known as ‘rational basis review’ – to analyzing whether the Idaho ban is constitutional.
‘That makes no sense to me,’ Sotomayor responded. She said Idaho’s ban classified athletes based on sex, and the Supreme Court has historically applied a higher level of scrutiny – known as ‘intermediate scrutiny’ – to that kind of law.
– Aysha Bagchi
Idaho makes plea for fairness
Idaho’s solicitor general, Alan Hurst, began his case with an appeal for fairness.
Someone’s sex correlates with “countless athletic advantages,” including muscle mass, bone mass, and heart and lung capacity, he said.
“If women don’t have their own competitions, they won’t be able to compete,” he said.
Hurst said the student challenging the law – Lindsay Hecox — is seeking “special treatment for males who allegedly lack an unfair advantage.” (Hecox, a senior at Boise State University, says her testosterone levels are typical of non-transgender women and her muscle mass and size have decreased because of her hormone treatments.)
Idaho’s law easily applies to 99% of males, he said, and “a perfect fit is not required.”
– Maureen Groppe
Debate begins with challenge to Idaho law
The debate, which could last several hours, has begun.
First up is the case from Idaho, which was the first state to pass a ban.
Defending the law is Idaho’s solicitor general, Alan Hurst.
His side goes first because Idaho is appealing the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that Idaho’s law likely violates the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, which requires the government to have valid reasons for treating people differently.
Idaho’s law is being challenged by Lindsay Hecox, a senior at Boise State University, who says her testosterone levels are typical of non-transgender women and her muscle mass and size have decreased because of her hormone treatments.
– Maureen Groppe
Demonstrators show support for sports ban
Dozens of demonstrators gathered outside the Supreme Court on Jan. 13 to show their support for state bans barring transgender women and girls from participating in female sports teams. Many in the crowd held up signs that said “save women’s sports,” “our sports our spaces” and “gender ideology harms kids,” as former Georgia state Rep. Alveda King led the crowd in singing “This Little Light of Mine.”
“The implications are clear, the court’s ruling will provide national guidance on Title IX that will resolve or reshape dozens of lawsuits around the country involving women and girls in athletics,” Stacey Schieffelin, the Women’s Initiative Chair at America First Policy Initiative, told the crowd. “This is a pivotal moment in the fight to preserve fairness, safety and the truth in women’s sports.”
Alexa Anderson, a 19-year-old track and field athlete, said she traveled all the way from Oregon to be in Washington, DC, for oral arguments. Anderson said the issue before the court has affected her personally: She and another athlete stepped off the podium in protest after competing against a transgender athlete in a high jump event during her senior year of high school and filed an ongoing Title IX lawsuit against state officials.
“I want other girls, all future generations, to have that same ability and to be able to feel that safety, that protection, and just the happiness overall that I felt growing up in the world of sports,” she said. “And not to worry about stepping on the field and thinking that there’s a biological man and that their risk of injury might be higher, and that all their hard work didn’t matter because they’re just going to be outperformed because of biology.”
− N’dea Yancey-Bragg
An ‘uphill fight’
Lawyers for the transgender students challenging Idaho’s and West Virginia’s bans aren’t boasting about their chances.
“We know we have an uphill fight,” Josh Block, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer, told reporters last week.
Block pointed to the Supreme Court’s 2025 decision upholding Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender minors. And since then, the court has allowed two of President Trump’s policies targeting transgender people to go into effect as they’re being challenged: Trump’s ban on transgender military troops and his requirement that passports identify someone by their biological sex at birth.
“It’s no secret that the past two years have been a really tough time to be transgender in this country,” Block said.
But he also noted that the court’s 2025 decision for Tennessee in U.S. v. Skrmetti avoided larger issues that would have extended its reach beyond health care.
“The court really went out of its way in Skrmetti to write a narrow decision instead of a broad one,” he said. “So we’re hopeful that the court will continue to be very sensitive to these issues.”
– Maureen Groppe
Protesters who’ve competed against trans athletes speak out
Several protesters , including Riley Gaines and others who have competed against transgender girls in the past, spoke out in support of the bans ahead of oral arguments, saying they believe that competing against transgender girls was unsafe, unfair and cost them opportunities in some cases.
“We want to win, we work to win, and we deserve a fair chance at victory,” Madison Kenyon, who competed on Idaho State University’s track and cross-country teams, said at a news conference on Jan. 12. ‘I’ll happily compete against challenging odds, but nobody should lose before the start of the race.’
Mary Marshall, who also competed on the track and cross-country teams at Idaho State University, shared with reporters the effort that goes into athletic training. She said losing to a transgender competitor left her wondering “whether my hard work is even worth that effort.’
Jennifer Sey, former All-Around Gymnastics National Champion and CEO of clothing brand XX-XY, said that even if the challenges to Idaho and West Virginia’s laws are defeated at the Supreme Court, their work won’t be done. She noted that 23 states and Washington, D.C. still wouldn’t have laws explicitly preventing transgender girls from participating in female sports.
“We need to change the cultural conversation,” she said.
– N’dea Yancey-Bragg
More at stake than trans participation in sports
If the Supreme Court decides that West Virginia’s ban doesn’t violate the Title IX civil rights statute barring sex discrimination in school programs, that ruling could affect more than sports.
Josh Block, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing the West Virginia student challenging the ban, said sports is just a “tiny part” of Title IX. If the court says that law doesn’t protect transgender students from discrimination, he said, then transgender students could be excluded from using restrooms that match their gender identity and a principal could expel a student for being trans.
“Title IX protects against sex discrimination in all parts of education,” he told reporters last week. “And whatever someone thinks about whether it’s okay to exclude transgender people from sports, I would hope that that ruling isn’t then used to exclude them from all other parts of school life, which would completely be on the table if West Virginia’s arguments prevail in their widest form.”
West Virginia AG says he expects a landslide victory
One day before oral arguments began, West Virginia Attorney General J.B. McCuskey expressed confidence that the states fighting challenges to laws that prevent transgender girls from competing on female sports teams would prevail. Losing the case would have “monumental” consequences, he said at a news conference Jan. 12 alongside several other Republican attorneys general and current and former female athletes.
“We all fully expect that this is going to be a 9-0 decision,” McCuskey said. “We are right on the facts, we’re right on the Constitution, we are right in public opinion, but importantly, we’re right on common sense.”
McCuskey’s Idahoan counterpart, Attorney General Raúl Labrador, however, said he was not as optimistic. Labrador said he expected many of the arguments would revolve around “legal technicalities” rather than the “common sense issues” at the heart of the case.
“And I think some of the justices of the court are going to have some issues with that,” Labrador said.
– N’dea Yancey-Bragg
Will Justice Gorsuch speak?
During last year’s oral arguments in a challenge to Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors, all eyes were on Justice Neil Gorsuch. That’s because the conservative justice, a Trump appointee, surprised many people in 2020 by authoring a 6-3 ruling that gay and transgender people are protected by a law barring sex discrimination in the workplace.
Last year, however, Gorsuch voted with the 6-3 majority to uphold Tennessee’s ban after not asking any questions during the oral arguments.
A big question going into today’s arguments is whether Gorsuch will stay mum or if he’ll offer any clues about whether the reasoning of the 2020 decision about workplace discrimination helps the transgender students’ challenge.
– Maureen Groppe
Is the Trump administration involved in the case?
Although the challenges are based on state laws, the Justice Department has also gotten involved. At the department’s request, Justice Department attorney Hashim M. Mooppan will get time during oral arguments to support the state bans.
President Donald Trump, who campaigned on the issue, has moved to cut off federal funding to schools that allow transgender females to participate in girls’ and women’s sports.
“The whole thing is ridiculous … and it’s so demeaning to women,” Trump said when he mocked transgender athletes during a recent speech to House Republicans.
– Maureen Groppe
This post appeared first on USA TODAY
